


Fears

by CheerUpLovely



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:17:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d thought it ironic that despite the name, her greatest fear was spiders. There was something amusing about the Black Widow drawing her feet onto the couch with her when a house spider scurried across the floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fears

He’d thought it ironic that despite the name, her greatest fear was spiders. There was something amusing about the Black Widow drawing her feet onto the couch with her when a house spider scurried across the floor.

Stark encouraged the fear, sometimes bought them into the base just to set them loose near her private quarters, usually whenever she’d beating him in training or shown him up in a mission. She still did protection work for Pepper, the current love of his life, but that didn’t seem to save her from his favourite form of revenge. Fury didn’t notice, and Coulson knew but paid the phobia no attention - he had far more important things to worry about than why Stark was making Natasha squeal. Everyone else would, if they noticed it was bothering her, remove the spider from the room to ease her. 

Anyone who teased her paid a heavy price.

But Clint was the only one who thought of the solution of removing her from the spiders location, not the other way around. 

“Tasha, Coulson’s looking for you.”

“Tasha, can you give me a hand with something?”

“Tasha, wanna see something cool?”

If she was already on the couch and not willing to put her feet on the ground because of the eight-legged curse that was guarding her, she wouldn’t rise to his distractions and then he’d go and physically lift her out of the seat. She was never tinier than when she was scared. No one said anything because quite simply, they were afraid to question this secret understanding that flowed between Hawkeye and Black Widow.

So he takes her away from the spider, sometimes before she’s even noticed it and the distraction is so flawless that she doesn’t even realise that it is one. They’ll go to the training room, go to the dining area, go outside, and in the evening after missions when the location of the spider is clearly Stark’s doing, they’ll go to one of their rooms and close the door. She’ll make him check every corner first; Stark isn’t above placing a big hairy one on her pillow.

And they’ll stay there until she’s happy enough to accept that the spider would have hidden itself, or that someone would have taken it outside, or better that someone had ‘accidentally’ stomped on it - she’d ask as well, she’d need to see the small crush stain on the floor as evidence that it was dead. They’ll curl up on the bed, feet gently resting as they keep their feet above the floor, just in case. They’ll sit on the mattress and play cards, they’ll work out, or sometimes they’ll just sit against each other in a comfortable silence.

It doesn’t matter what they do, it’s the gesture of it. It’s nature really. Hawks eat spiders in the wild. Hawkeye by name would remove them from her path. 

And when she falls asleep in his arms sometimes, he wonders if this phobia is how she got the name Black Widow.


End file.
